Reliability and validity of a self-developed virtual reality-based test battery for assessing motor skills in sports...

Athletes must master various motor skills for success in their sports. To assess performance and identify areas of improvement, effective sports-motoric tests are essential. Key abilities such as reaction time, jumping, and complex movement coordination are critical. Virtual reality (VR) offers a practical, traditional equipment-free tool for assessment, though new VR-based tests must be evaluated first. We evaluated a self-developed test battery to measure reaction time (drop-bar test), jumping ability (jump and reach test), and parkour execution involving multiple complex motor tasks (with/without a virtual opponent). 32 participants completed these tests twice in real environment (RE) and VR (pre- and post-test). Intraclass correlation coefficients showed high reliability for reaction time in RE (0.858) and VR (0.888), with moderate significant correlations between them (r = .445), suggesting validity. The jump and reach test showed even better reliability (RE: 0.944, VR: 0.886) with strong correlations between RE and VR (r = .838). The parkour test showed lower reliability (x̄ 0.770), particularly for one task, with significant differences between the conditions indicating different behavior in VR. However, the addition of a virtual opponent eliminated these differences. VR appears to be a promising alternative to traditional testing methods, revealing comparable values across conditions.